Waymo Sues Uber for Intellectual Property Theft

Waymo has filed a federal lawsuit in San Francisco claiming Uber and its self-driving truck company stole Waymo’s self-driving car technology. That intellectual property theft of Alphabet’s Waymo unit by an Otto self-driving truck employee earned that company more than $500 million, the complaint alleges. Uber acquired self-driving startup Otto last year for $680 million. Otto employees had committed “calculated theft” of Alphabet’s technology, the filing said. Waymo claims in the suit that it took seven years to design and build the laser-scanning system guiding self-driving cars. Uber was able to tap into Otto’s process of getting it done in nine months, according to the suit. Waymo was accidentally copied on an email from one of its vendors, which had an attachment showing an Uber Lidar circuit board that had a “striking resemblance” to Waymo’s design, according to the ...